Turkey contacts alleged spy, one refuses to meet with the consul

The Turkish Consul in Karlsruhe has contacted one of the arrested three Turkish men accused of spying on compatriots in Germany for Turkish intelligence, while another, a Turkish national, refused to meet with the consul, a Turkish official has told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Two of the arrested carry Turkish passports, while the third dropped their Turkish citizenship in 2005, according to the official.

A lawyer has been assigned for the case and next week the prosecutor will reveal the court file about the accusations and charges will be in clear detail, according to the official.

German prosecutors said Dec. 18 that they had arrested three men.

The federal prosecutor's office said two of the suspects - identified in line with German privacy rules only as Muhammed Taha G. and Göksel G. - were arrested Dec. 17 at Frankfurt airport. The third, Ahmet Duran Y., was arrested at his home in western Germany.

Muhammed Taha G. is accused of handling the other two as agents, and they collected information for him on Turks in Germany as well as their "organizational structures," prosecutors said in a statement.

They did not elaborate or say when the alleged spying took place, but said arrest warrants were issued on Nov. 11. The suspects were ordered to be remanded in custody pending a possible indictment.

Turkish security officials, who spoke to daily Hürriyet on condition of anonymity, said the three suspects had no links to MİT or the Prime Ministry. The same sources stressed that arrests came soon after media outlets affiliated to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) alleged that the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA) was being used by MİT to recruit agents in Germany. They also noted that...